


our little life is rounded with a sleep

by metonymy



Category: Inception (2010), The Sandman
Genre: Afterlife, Crossover, Multi, Nightmares, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-03
Updated: 2012-12-02
Packaged: 2017-11-20 03:51:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/581006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metonymy/pseuds/metonymy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death comes for all of them, eventually. But where they end up after isn't quite what any of them would have expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Ariadne wakes up in Paris. This is unusual for several reasons. The first and most obvious is that she closed her eyes in Moscow. It is a mark of the life she leads that the second reason is that the last thing she remembers before waking up was a bullet passing through her chest, rather than the first. But she has long ago learned not to trust herself when she wakes up in a place she doesn't remember falling asleep in. This is why she never sleeps on planes if she can help it.

The third reason is that she hasn't dreamed naturally in years. Of course, her first instinct is to check her totem. It's gone, though, which makes her start to panic. But if this is a dream... She extends her senses in the familiar push against the boundaries of her mind and body, and she sees the street ahead of her buckle and surge as if a great sea-serpent is about to cast it off.

And then - the fourth reason, and the most unusual of all - the street settles down again, cobblestones tucking neatly back into the ground with a sort of hollow thunking noise.

"Now, now, we'll have none of that," a voice says from over her shoulder. The accent is unfamiliar, and she turns, hands waiting at her sides to be filled with a weapon if she needs one to be there. But it's a rather unthreatening-looking gentleman, tall and spindly and angular like he's been built out of coathangers, and she looks at him without fear. She's still ready to react, of course, but there's no reason to pull a gun out of the ether and ruin the mood.

"Whose dream is this?" she asks, and his expression flickers from vaguely unimpressed to ever-so-slightly interested.

"That's a question I don't normally hear till later in the conversation," he acknowledges, shifting the books in his arms and giving her a searching look.

"I've done this before. Shared dreaming," she supplies when his expression doesn't change. He nods minutely.

"Is that what you call it? _Very_ interesting. I should like very much to ask you some questions, young lady, but I think for now you'd better come with me."

"Coming with you doesn't mean answering your questions? Where are we going?" Ariadne asks.

"We're going to leave the dreamers of Paris alone, for now, until I sort out what to do with you." The scarecrow-man sighs heavily, shifting the books again. Or maybe he's not shifting them; she thinks she sees them move independently of his actions, as if they're trying to slither away. That wouldn't be the strangest thing she's seen in a dream. He starts walking and she follows, managing to keep up in spite of his longer legs. Perhaps the stones are shifting under her again.

"Who are you?" she asks. "And what's going on? I don't think I'm supposed to be here."

"My name is Lucien," he says, not bothering to look down at her - and it would be quite a ways down. "I was collecting books for the library. I didn't expect to run into any unattached dreamers."

"What do you mean, unattached? I don't..." She stops talking for a moment, the realization of just what she's about to say hitting her. "I didn't think the afterlife would be like this." Lucien stops, and this time he does look down at her, eyes swimming in his fishbowl glasses.

"This isn't the afterlife, miss. Though it does seem that you are deceased."

And it's like a bullet blow all over again, and she's in the middle of what isn't actually Paris anymore but an anonymous street, and she doesn't want to cry in front of this stranger but she's _dead_ and she's not in Heaven or Hell or any place she doesn't believe in, she's trapped in... "Is it Limbo? Unconstructed dreamspace," she clarifies, even though it's probably unnecessary.

"This is the Dreaming," he says, and she can hear the capital letter. Ariadne wonders how that's different from what she said, but Lucien is opening a pocket watch and shaking his head. "I've been gone long enough. I'll speak to the master and see what he wants to do with you. Stay here. And don't touch anything." Then he's walking away and opening a door in one of the shadowy buildings nearby. Of course, of _course_ it's empty and he's gone when she looks through. Doors are one of the simplest tricks there is.

And now that she's alone, Ariadne sits down on the curb and indulges in tears. They're pointless, she knows; they're not real, none of this is real, and they won't change a damn thing. But she's dead. She's never going to see Arthur or Eames again, she's not going to see her parents or visit New York or buy a house or any of the things that she thought she would. She's not even thirty. She'll never be thirty.

Fuck.

She reaches into her pocket, trusting there'll be something to dry her tears, and it turns out to be one of Eames's handkerchiefs and that sets off the crying all over again. But eventually the handkerchief is a sodden rag and she's cried herself out, eyes burning even though they're not real. Then, because she's never been good at listening to directions, she starts walking.

It doesn't really matter which way she goes, she figures. Whoever runs this place is probably powerful enough to find her. So she walks and the greyed-out street slowly crumbles around her as she goes, like Cobb's limbo, like sandcastles falling into the ocean. But instead of waves the last building tumbles into parched sand, a desert that seems to be more the product of devastation than a simple climate difference. There's no sun in the sky; it's simply blank and bleached and empty. She keeps walking, noting the cracks in the ground and the place where half of a hill has simply been clawed away. After a while everything starts to blur together, and she wonders if she's been walking in circles without realizing.

The raven is following her. She isn't sure how long it has been there, a shadow following her own as she walks through the blighted landscape. When she comes to the blasted ruins of a tree, she stops and leans against it, and the raven flutters down to perch on the branch over her head.

"Why are you following me?" she asks, because it would be reasonable enough for it to answer.

"Because the boss sent me," it answers - or rather he answers, beak clacking. The voice is more human than she'd expected, male with a scratchy sort of swallowed sound underneath, not nearly what she'd thought of from the cartoon animals in her memory.

"Lucien? Why did he send you?"

"Lucien's not the boss." The caw is like a laugh gone wrong. "And you got me, lady." His straightforward speech helps keep her from the feeling that she's in a twisted fairytale. "Keep you from walking off a cliff, maybe, but you'd figure that out yourself, yeah?" He regards her with a bright, curious eye. "Maybe to make sure you don't break anything."

"What happened here?" she asks, regarding the barren plain around them.

"A war. Which you're glad you missed, trust me." The bark under her hands shivers and swells. A profusion of leaves bursts out of the branches. The raven launches into the air with a startled squawk, circling the tree before landing on the branch again. "Jeez, you couldn't warn a guy?"

"Sorry. I wasn't sure it would work." But then, it's still a dream, and without the Lucien and his books to tell her off she's pretty sure she can manipulate what she likes here. The raven flutters down and clings to her shoulder, a dark blur in the corner of her eye and a slight sting where his talons clasp through her shirt. "Can we keep going? Is this the right way?"

"Beats me, kid," the raven says. "Everything leads back to the castle eventually. I think that's what he said it does now."

"Who is he? And who are you?" Ariadne asks, as she starts walking. She's starting to feel like Alice down the rabbit hole, a comparison she's always worked very hard to avoid making. But this really is beyond even the most nonsensical dreams she's had, and she's fairly sure a talking bird has never appeared in any of those.

"I'm Matthew," he creaks. She glances up at him to see one bright, beady eye regarding her steadily. "What?"

"I don't know, I didn't think a bird would have a name like that." Huginn and Muninn, she recalls, or Coronis.

"I wasn't always a bird."

"Am I going to turn into a bird?"

"Dunno," he answers, settling his wings a bit. "Did you die while you were dreaming?"

"No." But as she says it she isn't sure, and she retraces her steps in her mind. "No, I woke up, and we were running, and then I was shot, and I woke up here."

"Huh. 'Cause I died here and he offered me the job."

"Your job is being a raven?"

"You ask a lot of questions," Matthew says, his wings shifting again.

"That's how you learn things," she replies. Echoes of her mother and father, back when she was very small. Who's going to tell them she died? The ground beneath her feet is growing softer, and she thinks she sees something on the horizon. Maybe just an illusion, but maybe something real. "I'm Ariadne."

"Weird name."

"It's Greek," she says, focusing on that smudge and letting her steps take her further. It's a trick she taught herself, one that made Arthur madly jealous. Bending the space in on itself inside each stride. The blur on the horizon slowly resolves and grows, as she speeds over the ground and the sky slowly darkens from white to grey to blue to indigo, until she is facing a castle of impossible and fantastical proportions. It's grander than anything she's ever seen, of course, and yet it holds itself aloft with grace and a certain delicacy she couldn't parallel. Fitting, she supposes, and shivers.

Matthew's talons squeeze her shoulder and he almost smacks her in the head as he takes off, flapping his way into the air. "I'll tell him you're here," he says, then flies over one of the parapets. Shouldn't the ruler of this realm know she's here without her saying?

There are creatures over the gate. Some kind of dragon, a gryphon, and something that's halfway between a horse and a bird. If she ever knew the name for it, she's forgotten. All three of them are regarding her now that she's seen them. Ariadne wishes that Matthew hadn't gone, or that she'd waited for Lucien. What happens if you get eaten by a dragon after you're already dead?

"Is there a password?" she asks. The gryphon leans down, its beak wickedly curved and eyes alight with a terrible intelligence.

"Do you intend to enter?" it asks her in turn.

"Well. Matthew did say he was going to tell... whoever your master is. I can wait out here, though." Ariadne wonders if there's going to be a maze for her to solve behind those doors and shoves her hands in her pockets, waiting. The familiar weight of her totem is still missing, which doesn't help her anxiety.

"Where else would you wait?" the horse-bird-thing asks. It sounds more curious than anything else.

"I mean, I could leave. Or find another way in." All three creatures stare at her, and she shrugs. "There's always another way in. Or out."

Before she has time to embarrass herself further, a bird comes back over the parapet. She's not sure that it's Matthew till he lands on her shoulder again and the gates slowly open. Ariadne marches through without looking up, letting out a breath once she's inside the entrance hall. The ceiling disappears into shadows far over her head, and while she thinks she sees flickers of movement in her peripheral vision there's nobody there when she turns to look. Matthew gives her directions, his voice even scratchier now in hushed tones. The anxiety has turned to dread cold and thick in the pit of her stomach. When they arrive at a pair of doors, something pale and wrought into curves and tendrils, he clacks his beak again. "Good luck, kid," he says, then takes off, wings flapping down the hall.

The doors open into a garden, and Ariadne walks through. The garden does not seem to be a greenhouse, but she's fairly sure there are still walls around the edges. But that might be a trick of perception. The air is cool enough against her face, though, and the smell of soil and green things is rich and thick. Ariadne walks for a while. She's not sure how long it is when her steps take her around a corner and she sees a man standing only a few paces away.

The man in the garden is all in white, wild hair standing out around his head, but when he turns his eyes are fathomless holes with a glitter deep within them like the night sky. Ariadne is reminded abruptly of Mal, the shade of Cobb's imaginings and the hollow rage behind her eyes, but then the man cocks his head as Matthew did and the memory flees. He is ageless, looking somehow both young and unsure and yet impossibly old. Arthur's face rises now to her mind's eye; he used to have that same mix of experience and weariness held in a face that was far too young to contain it. But this being has never been alive like that, she's sure of it, has never felt the pounding of blood behind his temples or wept with frustration and rage or closed his eyes as lovers brought a smile to his lips. A wave of loneliness passes through her and she has to blink hard.

"Here you are at last," he says. "What is your name?" As if he hasn't heard her say it to his - minions? Servants? Retainers. As if he doesn't know everything that happens in this realm. But it's polite to ask, she supposes, and formality is required.

"Ariadne." She doesn't qualify it with an honorific; which one would she even use?

"More like Persephone," he says, lips quirking very slightly, and she realizes that her clothes have become a chiton, bound beneath her breasts with a red cord. She knows without looking that there are stars caught in the curls of her hair. It makes her angry - and frightened that she didn't feel it before. "Though she is grown hard and cold, and would not welcome the comparison," he continues. "Did you choose your name, or did the name define your purpose?"

"Why am I here?" she asks at last. A question for another question, in place of an answer she isn't sure she knows anymore to a question she's heard a thousand times or more. He gives her a look and she decides it must be meant as a smile. His face doesn't look used to the expression. "I mean, this isn't the underworld. It's a dream."

"You are dead." His voice is unbearably gentle.

"I know that," she says, irritated. Then thinks better of snapping at the lord of this realm, because he could probably unmake her with a thought. "I mean, the dead only show up as projections." Except apparently that's not true, because she's still here and there's more to her than whatever died. An immortal soul? "So why am I here? _How_ am I here?"

"Because you are interesting," he says, "I asked my sister to bring you here after your death. And because I could use you."

"Use me. But this dream already exists."

"It is not one dream. It is all of them. You are in the Dreaming."

The same term Lucien used. She turns a little to look past him, at the plants that are - of course - like nothing she's seen before. Purple globes of flowers glow slightly with inner lights, and the air is full of subtle fragrance. Ariadne trails a finger over a broad, waxy leaf. "All of the dreams connected. Everything we did was here." She's guessing. And she hates that.

"And you learned how to build and to destroy. All for your petty thievery." If she was still alive, Ariadne's pretty sure she would be aflame with anger right now. But she's dead. And much of it was theft, plain and simple under the dreams and the art. Even if their targets were liars and thieves themselves. That never made the invasion of privacy all right, and they trampled all over whatever laws this land must have had. And ignorance of the law is no defense. Besides, he's not accusatory as he continues. He simply lists it off like a court secretary. "You meddled in things you did not understand. Children with toys they could not comprehend."

"Then why bring me here? Why not send me somewhere to be punished for what I did?" she asks, still examining the flowers. In her peripheral vision she sees the figure move down the aisle of plants, some of them bending towards the white column of his robes.

"I could, if you would prefer. But I think that would be a waste."

"So what will you use me for instead?"

"You have seen the Dreaming. The devastation."

"Matthew said there was a war."

"I could mend it all. But... I am newly arrived in this aspect. I have other responsibilities, other duties, and I am learning. Not many of my servants understand how to build as you do." He sounds unsure, somehow, and that might be more frightening than anything else.

"You're offering me a job." She can't decide if this is weirder than the time she followed a random stranger to a warehouse and let a dapper young man hook her up to an intravenous drug delivery system. At least here the worst that can happen to her already has.

The pale man smiles at her, though there is no mirth or warmth in it. "If that is how you would like it to be called, then yes."

Ariadne takes a few steps, bending over a cluster of flowers the color of dried blood and thinking. Pure creation, she once called it, and this is going to be more than that ever was. It's too much, there has to be a catch in here somewhere. On the other hand: she is already dead. And if she's honest with herself, this is all just wasting time to let herself get used to the idea that she's spending her afterlife as a dreamweaver. It's not Hell. It's got to be worth the risk.

"All right," she says finally. The flowers seem to sigh towards her, and for a moment she thinks she hears singing. Maybe she does. This place could do that. "Is there a contract I have to sign, or something?"

He steps forward and extends a hand, and after a moment she reaches hers out as well. His fingers are long and cool. For a moment his thumb presses against the center of her palm, where her lifeline terminates, and there's an instant of heat and light.

"There," he says. "Welcome, Ariadne." He steps away and rounds a corner. It's impossible to be surprised when he's nowhere to be seen as Ariadne walks after him.

"Matthew?" she asks. Her voice echoes back to her like warbles underwater. There's a rush of fluttering and the dark shape of the raven perches on a branch that shouldn't support his weight. "Where am I supposed to go?" Ariadne can hear herself sounding painfully young and lost. But then, lost is an accurate word for her situation.

"I dunno about supposed," he says, dipping his head to look at her with one bright eye. "You could see Eve. She might know."

So Ariadne sets out again, Matthew flying along at times, since he doesn't have any messages to carry. How a raven should be a messenger she isn't sure, since he seems like he would be wasted as a carrier pigeon. The symbolism here seems to be all topsy-turvy. But it is the land of dreams, she supposes. It feels like a shorter walk this time. Or maybe being actually tied to the place lets her move more swiftly, or something else entirely. Maybe she's just losing track of how time works now that she's dead and in dreams. Can she remember how she got here? Every single step along the way? It's only when you wake up that things seem strange, she thinks, and chokes on a laugh.

Somehow she expects the cave to be damp. Spaces under the earth, fertility rites and all that, the humidity and funk of secret places where no man may venture. But instead it's simply quiet and dusty as she clambers up into the mouth of the cave where an isolated figure waits. Or is sitting. There's no reason this stranger should expect anyone here, is there?

"You're really Eve?"

The woman gives her a sharp look. Perhaps it's a stupid question.

"Sorry," Ariadne says, abashed and suddenly feeling the weight of exhaustion pressing tears to the corners of her eyes. She clasps her hands in front of herself and bows; it seems appropriate. Curtsying on the uneven ground would probably send her tumbling back down the side of the mountain. "I apologize."

"That's not necessary," says the woman, looking less forbidding than she did a moment ago. Her hair is a cloud of black curls, her curves swathed in a grey robe. "Come, sit. You must be weary."

It's hard not to laugh, but Ariadne is honestly beyond exhausted by now, and she picks her way in and sits down on a bit of level ground. At some point her chiton changed back to her favorite grey jeans and rust-red jacket. That's comforting. Also disturbing.

"What do I do?" she asks. Eve turns from looking out over the landscape to meet Ariadne's gaze.

"What did you agree to do?"

"To help rebuild."

"Then that sounds like an excellent place to start." Eve draws her wrappings more closely around herself, then comes to sit by Ariadne. She smells like warm bread and soil and something spicy and strange. "Everyone has their niche to fill, here. If he asked you to stay, you must have a purpose here. Even those who seem most useless have their role to play." Eve keeps speaking, but Ariadne succumbs to exhaustion and sinks into a blank haze. For the briefest moment she wonders whether one can fall asleep in this place, and then the thought is gone and she's leaning against Eve's warm shoulder. Later she'll try to remember whether Eve was singing. If she dreams, she doesn't remember it.


	2. Chapter 2

The first times she went dreaming still stand out in her mind with sharp-edged clarity. Folding Paris in half, the giddy sickening swing of changing the planes of gravity, the drop in her stomach as she watched the Penrose steps yawn open beneath her. Cobb and his eyes intent, the burning intensity of Mal's shade, Arthur and the fine distinctions between awake and asleep. She remembers telling him that she couldn't stay away, not when pure creation beckoned her.

But this is like going from sitting under the sun to plunging into its burning heart. Things move and change with the merest thought, what was solid melting and flowing where she wishes. Colors transmute objects into things wondrous and strange. A chapel has walls that ring with the clear chimes of glasses being struck. A desert with spires rising out of the dust, a mirage that shimmers out of the haze and into solidity. A meadow with the scent of flowers thick in the mouth like honey, a hill with snow fluttering down into pillowy drifts, an autumn wood where the trees are aflame with colour until a second glance shows the leaves stark against the sky. She builds the castles and aqueducts and undersea grottoes she could never work into her jobs, the fantastical and the everyday blending under her hands.

Before, she built mazes. Dead ends and walls and paradoxes to confound projections. Blind alleys, devil's pitchforks, boltholes to hide in and safes to store secrets. Dreams with walls around them and limits within them and just false enough to be believable as real. Now she builds doors, opening here and closing there and spanning the Dreaming in between. There are tunnels and pathways and Roman roads stretching across infinite spaces. Lucien's library holds many maps but none of them are accurate, for the land is ever-changing; Ariadne suspects the only true map lies inside their employer's head. And it's not just where things are, but what she builds that lasts or doesn't. A fine cathedral may be nothing more than tumbled ruins, and she can choose to build it up or not when she returns. Or the blocks may become the spine of an ancient creature heaved up through the turf. She serves the inspiration of the moment rather than a Cobb-like wish to build a world of her very own.

Ariadne does build herself a place, though. It looks like Frank Lloyd Wright was commissioned to build a witch's cottage in the woods. It doesn't look like anything familiar or real - even though her lord has promised she won't and can't lose herself, even though this is Limbo, she doesn't want too many reminders of the home she left behind when she died. But she wanted a home of her own. The bed is narrow and an oval mirror waits above it, and she isn't sure whose idea that was.

Matthew comes by a little while after she's finished - she can't really say whether it's a day or a night but it feels like less than a week. He's been checking in on her the whole time she's been here; Ariadne isn't entirely convinced that this is part of his duties as enforced upon him by Dream. He's a messenger raven, after all, and he never asks her for words to carry back to their mutual employer. At first he just perches on the post at the bottom of the steps, watching with one eye as she approaches. And she sits on the steps and they talk; about the dream-world, about adjusting. He tells her about his life, little by little; he wasn't a good man, but Ariadne assures him that she wasn't exactly good either.

It doesn't take nearly as long for her to narrate the story of her life, straight as it was till she met Cobb and formed his team. But Matthew is clearly fascinated by the PASIV, the idea that people can share dreams on purpose. "Not that you're the first people ever," he adds. By this point he's in the kitchen, on a forking branch that grows out of the butcher-block island specifically for him. Ariadne looks up from her tea and smiles.

"I never thought we were. Magicians, gods, ancient rites. All that stuff."

"Or the boss," he agrees, fluffing his feathers and settling down. "You ever see him? On your jobs, I mean."

Ariadne thinks back over the years, over the hours and days and weeks spent in dreaming, and shakes her head. "He's kind of hard to miss. But I guess that doesn't mean he wasn't watching."

Matthew caws out a laugh. "He likes to make people think that. Makes his job easier. Don't tell him I told you that."

She mimes zipping her lip and throwing away an invisible key, and he laughs. She's tempted to ruffle his feathers, quite literally, but somehow that seems like crossing a line. It would be too much like when she used to muss Arthur's hair just to see him struggle between indignation and fondness. A little too close for this friendship. Also Matthew is still a bird, and still older and more experienced, and she would never have done something like that to Yusuf or Cobb. So Ariadne merely smiles back. There's always something held in reserve here, as she finds her footing and waits to see if this dream will dissolve like so many others.

Still, outside of her little house and the grove of trees surrounding it, she lets loose. There's no danger anymore of building from memory and she recreates with abandon. After all, the dreamers are moving through their own worlds, they're happy to remember the dreams of Earth. Or to visit, if they're from other realms. She's astonished the first time she sees a flickering figure of flame and finds out that it's the dreaming self of a sentient star, from halfway across the universe. Of course, Ariadne lives in dreams now, and she should be used to the idea that there are far more beings than just humans.

It's still a surprise when she actually talks to the slight figure she's seen around the castle, on her infrequent visits there to borrow a book from Lucien or see whether the lord of the realm has any wishes for her to fulfill. And Ariadne keeps seeing a person who melds with the background of the castle's walls as effortlessly as if she had been born there. She belongs, in a way Ariadne doesn't, and yet she still jumps with shock when Ariadne speaks to her for the first time.

Ariadne catches the bucket the woman drops and offers it back to her. "Sorry. I didn't mean to startle you," she says with a sheepish smile.

"That's - that's all right. May I help you with anything?" the woman asks, peering through the mousy hair that covers her face and barely conceals her high, pointed ears.

"Are you related to Lucien?" Ariadne replies, pondering. There's a grace about this woman that would suggest otherwise, but it's a shot in the dark.

The woman draws herself up, chin lifting in what seems like an unaccustomed show of pride. "No. I come from Faerie."

"Faerie? Like actual fairies." Ariadne can feel a smile spreading across her face, maybe inappropriately.

"Yes." The woman withdraws into herself again and is about to go when Ariadne touches her shoulder.

"Sorry, I - I didn't mean to offend you. I'm still sort of new here and I don't... it's still new to find out all these places existed that I didn't even know about." Ariadne lets out a slow breath. "That the stories have a grain of truth in them."

The woman relaxes slightly, fiddling with something sparkly that's dangling about her neck. "Stories are true here."

"I'm still learning that," Ariadne admits sheepishly. "I really am sorry, though."

"It's all right. Who are you?"

"Ariadne." She extends her hand, then withdraws it; the woman is halfway through a little bobbing curtsey. Is Ariadne supposed to bow? Sure, okay, she tries it. It feels awkward, but at the end of it both of them are smiling.

"Nuala. I work here."

"So do I, really. I shouldn't keep you. But I'll see you around?" Ariadne feels like her speech sounds rough and informal in front of this gentle creature - a faerie! - but Nuala's smile is warm for all its shyness. The next time Ariadne sees her they smile at each other, and gradually a friendship grows between them, till Nuala starts visiting her house to have a cup of chamomile tea in the kitchen and share stories of their respective worlds.

While there may be tentative relationships she builds with the other inhabitants of the realm, Ariadne knows better than to expect any of that with her employer. She can go weeks without seeing him and those occasions are not what she would call warm. He rarely chastises, often ignores her, but she knows he's aware of every move she makes.

There's the time she becomes utterly lost in building a theater, perhaps from something she glimpsed in a child's dream as their half-slumber smeared across the archway of a convenient aqueduct. A place for whirling cascades of ballerinas to sparkle across the stage, for a tree to grow to the size of the sky and toys to stride across the boards like men. A palatial hall with plenty of plush boxes and private nooks and draped curtains for a dreamer's rendezvous. Not just the child with the tingling celesta chiming through their sleep, but her own half-remembered dreams of dancing in front of the television set. But here the Rat King will be real, the Nutcracker will creak with the strain of wooden joints, and the Land of Sweets will glisten with sticky syrup as the rear wall falls away. She envisions marzipan and gingerbread dancers, a twisting ribbon of tea taking form in graceful arabesques and pirouettes, the scent of chocolate rising as a bullfight is reenacted. The stage lights are refracted through lollipop discs instead of gels, never melting under the heat, the wafers of the flats crisped into latticework like ice cream cones. Even the Sugar Plum Fairy's skirt would turn to candy floss, if she could influence the dreamers that far.

"I could," he says behind her, and Ariadne nearly falls over the mezzanine railing at the sudden presence of Dream, the solid mass where an instant before there was nothing. Or where he was for ages until she noticed him. Her very own Drosselmeyer. Except the look on his face is not inscrutable wisdom or veiled intrigue but something she wants to believe is delight. "Set them in motion. The dreamers do not supply it all. You know that by now."

"But what would happen to them when it ended?" she asks, propping her elbows on the velvet-topped railing and looking down. The theater is back to looking like a normal theater, the Land of Sweets waiting in the metaphorical wings to be called back into service. Things can exist in the same place at the same time here, laid over one another like tracing paper.

"They would disappear, or die, or continue on here somehow. Like all the others. And like you." His fingers are spindly ghosts beside hers, nearly glowing as they rest atop the dark red pile. It's like a caress the way he barely brushes over the surface of the velvet. She always was good with texture, with the details nobody consciously notices of pocked walls and the weave of curtains and the weight of furniture pressing into a carpet, the muscle beneath the skin that made a dream-built world feel real. Eames would love the stage, she thinks, and Arthur would favor the third box on the right for its superb view and nearly hidden vantage point. Both of them would consider the confectionary castle an indulgence and tell her to save it for their next vacation. At least, she thinks, her current employer encourages these whims of hers.

She feels like she ought to thank him. She thinks speaking the words aloud would only break whatever fragile understanding they have between them, that cannot bear the weight of the word _friendship_ but is a chain between them all the same, built up link by link since the moment he took her hand in his garden or the moment she woke up here instead of anywhere else. So she unfolds her arms and lets her fingers brush against his hand for a moment, a press of warmth that leaches from her skin into his like she's touching cool marble. When she lifts her eyes to his she thinks he knows what she meant by it. But that may be reading too much into the silence, and soon he is gone and she is left in the quiet empty hall alone.

The dreamers come and populate the theater, as they always do, children and grownups and beings for whom age means little. This realm is theirs as much as it is hers or anyone else's, and they spread themselves across it like dandelion clocks on the wind. But Ariadne stays far away from the bubbles that she learns to recognise as shared dreams. Like shimmering membranes over what she knows now are tiny portions of the Dreaming, they don't disturb the whole for very long after they burst upon waking. She stays away because there's no reason to disrupt them, to substitute her work for a living architect's creations. And she stays away out of fear. If she sees Eames, or Arthur - would it be like Mal's intrusions but worse? She can theoretically die here without waking up a level above. They might shoot her. Not an experience she wants to undergo again. More than that, she doesn't want to torment them. They must have mourned her by now, sought revenge against her killers, told her family, shut away their memories of her. Seeing her in their dreams would only hurt them, she reasons. So she stays away.

When the change comes, she knows that she hasn't felt this before: a flickering sense of a change in the texture of the world. Though she's long since stopped thinking in terms of days or weeks, she knows it's been quite some time since she came here. But apparently the Dreaming will always hold the capacity to surprise her.

"Do you feel that?" she asks Dream. He turns his eyes upon her, the blankness of his face the perfect deadpan.

"I feel everything, maze-spinner," he says. "But there is something new here. Go and meet them and bring them here, if you would."

Ariadne sets off, catching a ride with a Grand Prix driver racing in his sleep, then a child dreaming of a sailing ship. She dives off the side and surfaces in a small pond and pulls herself onto the shore of a grove, her clothes steaming gently as they dry. The flicker is brighter here somehow, and familiar, though she can't pin down why.

There's a man standing in the mouth of the trees, the noonlight above the leaves casting him into shadow. She's been here long enough that she can see the deliberate costume for what it is. He is tall and thin and his shadow is wrong. She steps onto it and pins the shadow there with her foot against the mossy undergrowth. He winces, teeth bright in the dark of his face.

"Take off the forgery," she says, fearful and hoping.

The skin around him shivers and fades and he's standing there in front of her, a little older, something off about his face but still the one she spent an inordinate amount of time looking at. She'd be willing to bet if he took off his shirt he'd have more scars and tattoos, perhaps a little more mass around his middle. And right now he's looking at her with an expression she learned long ago was one carefully smoothed into blankness, reserved for when he is truly struggling to suppress emotion and can't feign anything other than placidity.

"Eames," she says, and the syllable strikes him like a bullet and he takes a step back. "I'm not a projection," she adds. He gives her an indulgent smile.

"Of course you're a projection, my dear," he says. "You've been dead for five years." Five years. Longer than she expected, even knowing that time flows differently in dreams.

"And you? Five minutes, would you say?" He seems more surprised that she _isn't_ surprised. The something-off resolves in her mind and she squints at him. "Did you break your nose?"

"Buenos Aires," he says with a shrug. "Five minutes, you think? I couldn't really be sure, it was rather confused. Lots of shooting." He's got his hands in his pockets and won't step closer to her.

"So you two just never stopped? After Moscow?" This time he does react, sucking in a breath like she's pressed on a bruise deep beneath the skin. "Eames, I promise, I'm real. This is real in its own way."

"Where are we?" he says finally.

"The Dreaming. Where all dreams meet. Do you remember dying?"

"I thought I had. And then I woke up here, but it's definitely not Moscow. And we were awake."

"We?"

"Arthur." He smiles bitterly. "And now he's all alone?"

That makes her breath come out all stuttery; she's been so excited and anxious to see Eames that she hadn't thought about Arthur for a moment. Ariadne casts her senses out, feeling along the dreams that overlap like a spider in its web, and shakes her head. "He's not nearby. I don't know."

Eames goes quiet and shuttered for a moment, not looking at her, and she reaches over to touch his arm. His hand is large and warm over hers just like it used to be; she breathes out slowly and leans towards him, and his free arm comes up to circle her shoulders. They're quiet for a long while.

Finally they part, Eames putting a gentle hand under her chin to tilt her face up to his.

"We should get going," she says, leaning into his touch.

"Going where?" he asks.

"To see my boss," she replies, and pulls back to take his hand. "Come on." Ariadne opens a door in the side of the tree that wasn't there a moment ago, and they step through to see the castle at the heart of the Dreaming rising up before them.

Eames is not often speechless, but he is silent at her side as they walk forward. "What is this, Ariadne?"

"Dream's castle." Her hand tightens around his.

"Is that what you call him? Dream? No titles?"

"He has them, and he has other names, but... that's what I call him." She shrugs and walks with him up the path to the front gate, where the guardians peer down at her. But this time Ariadne doesn't quail or wilt, she simply waves up at them. The wyvern snorts and the gates open. Eames cranes his neck to look up at the beasts as he walks, nearly tripping and falling the length of himself on the slippery floor. Ariadne smothers a laugh.

Nuala is passing through the hallway and Ariadne beckons to her. "Do you know where the boss is?"

The faerie woman gives Eames a wary glance and he smiles broadly at her, and Ariadne considers elbowing him. "He's on the south balcony," Nuala says. "Are you bringing this one to him?"

"Yes. He's one of mine," Ariadne says.

"Good luck," Nuala replies, with uncharacteristic acerbity, and heads off on her way. Eames watches her go and turns back to Ariadne with a raised eyebrow.

"I _like_ her," he says.

"Hush, you," Ariadne answers. Eames is quiet the rest of the way to the hall that opens onto the wide southern balcony, where Matthew is perched on the railing and talking to the pale column of robes and wild hair that is the lord of this realm. "Sire?" she asks.

He turns and she can feel Eames straighten up beside her. The darkness in his eyes is still a shock, but now she sees it as expectant and interested rather than blank or frightening.

"Eames," he says. "I bid you welcome to my service, and my realm." Eames steps forward and Ariadne lowers her eyes as Dream explains why Eames is here, what he will be expected to do. And there is a flash of light, and Eames is shaking his hand, and Ariadne lets out a breath. So it's going to be all right then.

They are dismissed and Ariadne brings him to the only place she thinks of as home, somewhere nobody else goes. Matthew and Nuala tend to spend their visits in the kitchen, and her employer only summons her, and Eve likewise prefers to stay near the hearth. But Eames follows her up the trail through the grove and into the living room, where an overstuffed armchair has appeared, and up the stairs to the bedroom. It seems perfectly natural that the bed has widened to accommodate him when she leads him over the threshold. Over the headboard, an ornate frame hangs next to the simple oval one.

Perhaps some people will have fevered dreams tonight, she thinks as Eames bends his head to her breasts, thick with the taste of sweat and honey. She hopes that some dreamers will feel peaceful and joyous, because that's all she can think as they move together; she finally has one of them back with her, even if it's strange.

Afterwards she leans over him, tracing the new tattoos while he lies with his hands behind his head and watches her with a lazy sort of interest. Her fingers drag slowly over his skin, from the dragon she knows to a sequence of numbers that are unfamiliar, and down to the top of his thigh. There, just under his pelvis, is a bishop. Her hand stills and she looks up at him, mouth full of words.

"We missed you, love," he says softly, eyes bright. She lies down atop his chest and feels his big arms wrap around her shaking form. Five years, she thinks, five years since he had that inked into his skin to remember her by, five years since he held her like this, five years since she's been living in dreams. He strokes his fingers through her hair as if nothing has changed, even though everything has.


	3. Chapter 3

Eames settles in quickly; he's not exactly a nightmare, but he delights in joining dreamers and guiding them to places or things they wouldn't otherwise see. He makes friends with other beings, at least with those who are amenable to friendship; he learns all their names, even the ones unpronounceable by human tongues. Once Ariadne sees him under a staircase in the palace playing cards with Merv Pumpkinhead, and she hides her smile as she turns away. The Fashion Thing takes a liking to Eames and he becomes unrecognizable at times, caught up in whatever the latest trend or obsession might be, slipping them on with all the ease of his forgeries.

But he always comes home to Ariadne. The little fairytale house in the woods expands just a bit to fit him in; her small sunlit studio now has two desks and a broken-down armchair. The kitchen rearranges itself to suit the two of them working in concert, and though neither of them strictly needs food they find themselves falling into the old routine of cooking. And it's something to do when their friends arrive, even if the friends don't eat food. Nuala only eats flowers so those are always waiting in a cupboard. Matthew prefers raw meat, the riper the better, but he doesn't object when Eames gets it into his head to experiment with sushi and has bits of improperly carved fish hanging about.

That's actually how she realizes that Matthew has been gone for an awfully long time. The raw meat is sitting without being eaten for weeks, and she doesn't see him throughout her travels, and he's not hanging about the castle either. Ariadne can't identify when it turns into an actual search rather than noting his absence as she goes, but nobody seems to have seen Matthew when she asks. When she goes to Eve's cave, the hillside is shrouded in cloud, and despite her efforts it grows denser as Ariadne tries to scale the slope. So she gives up, and privately mourns, and doesn't bother asking Dream outright. Would he understand, or has he seen so many ravens come and go that they're simply another cycle of the realm?

It's not as though Ariadne has seen every part of the Dreaming, though. Perhaps Matthew is hiding somewhere she hasn't gone. But Eames hasn't seen him either, and he likes to go to the places she doesn't stay in, the old parts of the Dreaming, the bits untouched for ages and ages. He goes to the ramshackle house where the brothers live with their gargoyles, where murder is as commonplace as it was in extractions, where a kiss and a kick and a kill blend into one another. Ariadne has met them, of course, but while she thinks she might like getting to know Abel she would prefer to avoid the company of Cain.

Eames also goes to the lonely places, the desolate sands that bleed into the waking world, the swamps that seem to fill with despondence and dreamers who are unable to find respite in sleep from their waking trouble. It's ambiguity he's always enjoyed, so long as he has something to ground him and call him back to himself, and he always makes it home for dinner. Even if that has an increasingly flexible meaning these days.

Occasionally he brings guests, and Ariadne doesn't in principle mind opening their home to others. It's a place for friends. But when he brings home a figure with shoulders almost as wide as his and a glittering smile, she can feel her insides screaming to throw them both out the door. The glasses in the cabinet shiver slightly with a chorus of faint warning chimes.

"Ariadne." The Corinthian's sunglasses reflect her own face back to her, ghost-pale with dark eyes flashing with anger.

"No," she says flatly, turning from him to look at Eames, feeling watched even though the nightmare properly has no eyes to watch her with. Maybe he uses echolocation or something. She doesn't care. She refuses to have him in their home. Nightmares are a part of the Dreaming, they're as important as the creatures of laughter and whimsy, but that doesn't mean Ariadne wants to host someone with as many whispers about him as the Corinthian. Taking his talents into the waking world, feasting on body parts with the sick secrets behind those sunglasses... even a flexible view of morality must have its limits somewhere, and the Corinthian is beyond hers.

"Come on, Ariadne," Eames wheedles, but he stops when he sees her face. "Well. All right, then. Let's go." And he turns and walks back out the door, and Ariadne bolts it after them.

When Eames comes home he smells of something sour and unpleasant. She wonders if he's growing tired of this unlife, of the hours that stretch into infinity. If in slipping into other people's skin he's started to lose the core of himself. Ariadne worries now, when he's gone and doesn't say where he's going, when he doesn't talk about what he's been doing. Until the evening she comes home and sees a shining pair of spectacles in the shadow of the porch roof accompanied by the glow of a cigarette.

"Get the hell off my porch," she says flatly. The leaves rustle behind her as the Corinthian stands, the porch swing bumping against his legs.

"Very well, lady," he says, voice smooth and curiously lacking in affect. "I merely came to tell Eames that I cannot play poker with him tonight."

"You play cards?" Whatever she thought they might have been doing, that wasn't it. His teeth flash white in the darkness.

"He has been teaching me to cheat. Apparently my bluffing is appallingly bad." His hands are in his pockets as he walks down the steps, moving to the side as she approaches. "I swear to you, I have no ill intent toward him. Or you. I do not prey on our own."

Ariadne folds her arms, as much to keep her hands from shaking as to look stern and forbidding. "Why should I believe you? I've heard the stories."

He exhales a cloud of cigarette smoke. "I was unmade and refashioned. Much like the master of this realm. I serve my purpose here, as you do yours. Do not begrudge the shark for hunting, or the vulture for eating carrion, any more than the ant or the spider building their tiny worlds."

"Is that supposed to flatter me? Because you're doing a terrible job." In spite of herself, she's mollified. Not utterly soothed, but she's not going to summon the ground to swallow him whole. He nods and walks past her and vanishes, and when Eames comes home they don't talk about it, but she wonders. Whether they really have found their right places, and what's going to happen if they're ever left alone again.

When another bright spot appears in the Dreaming, Ariadne doesn't bother to ask before she heads out searching for it. There's no time for that, even in a place where time ebbs and flows like an uncertain tide. The shadows carry her swiftly as thought.

She finds him in a bit of landscape that was here long before she was, somewhere she rarely goes. Coincidence. A stretch of tall grass bounded by trees, an anonymous patch of landscape that could be anywhere in the United States, and in the middle is a figure sitting on a rock like an especially large and angular crow. By now she could pass through the grass like water, but Ariadne makes the blades rustle as she wades through them to the rock. He could be practicing to be a guardian of a gate, she thinks, and smiles just as he looks in her direction. There's no surprise, only a certain blankness to his eyes. The circles under them look more or less permanent, his hairline a bit further back and his cheekbones somehow even more pronounced.

The world shifts around them as she shrugs. Now they're in Paris again, on the street around the corner from the warehouse where they used to buy coffee, where she gave him a scarf once just to see those incongruous dimples show up on his long lean face. Instead of a rock he's sitting on a bench, still folded over with his elbows on his knees. She wonders if the dimples even exist anymore.

"You can check your die if you want," she says, hands in her pockets. It's a mark of how uncertain he is that he pulls it out of his shirt pocket and kneels, rolling once twice and again on the pavement. She knows the die is coming up right, and that the point isn't the number (probability renders this too uncertain) but the weight of the die rolling in his hand. Just for fun she tilts the paving stone and it rolls away from him, coming to a stop when she traps it under the toe of her boot.

"This isn't funny," he says flatly, and part of her wants to shake him. Is this what it was like for him? Without either of them there to make sure he didn't just sink?

"No, it's not," she says. "But you know you're not just dreaming, don't you." Ariadne can hear her voice shake a little; this should be easier, the second time around. He stands up and looks at her, hands empty and loose at his sides. "What happened? Job gone wrong? That's what it was for me, and for Eames."

"Not quite," he says. "What do you mean, you and Eames? Who's behind this?" There's a gun in his hand and she frowns at him. He stows it in the back of his pants, which is a sign of just how unsettled he is. He hated putting his gun in his waistband or anywhere but a proper holster.

"I mean what I said. He's here with me. Well, not _here_ here, obviously, but he's been with me in this realm for some time now." She opens a door in the wall and steps through onto her porch, looking out on the garden and trees that are familiar to her now. Arthur follows her, brows drawing together into one straight line of disapproval.

"Would you prefer it if I brought out the ball of thread?" she asks.

"A little cliche, don't you think?" he replies. It's almost humor, and she'll accept it as such.

"After you died," she explains, sitting next to him on the porch swing that shows up occasionally. There are at least two handspans between them on the seat, but he has his hands politely folded in his lap like the choirboy he never was, and her hands are gesturing as she talks. "He claimed you. That's how it was for me, and for Eames, and now for you."

"He?"

"Dream." He gives her one of those looks that makes her think he knows all her secrets. But she has some new ones.

"What, like Morpheus?"

"Our new employer," Eames says from behind the swing, one hand stealing over to her curls. Arthur jumps, and she's pretty sure Eames is suppressing a laugh behind them at finally being able to get that reaction again. His other hand strokes down Arthur's cheek with the backs of his fingers and rests at the nape of Arthur's neck in a gesture Ariadne didn't realize she missed seeing till now. Arthur's eyes close; is he rejecting this or accepting the touch? "How did it happen?"

Arthur doesn't answer for a long time. They don't push him; they've got all the time in the world, and he's back with them. Finally, he speaks. "Can you tell me more about this place?" And they do, they explain it all to him. Eames comes around and sits on Arthur's other side, and he and Ariadne are both touching him lightly, afraid to lose contact as they talk. How they've been claimed for their talents and skills, how both of them woke up here after they died, how it's not just one dreamer but all of them working together, continuously making and unmaking the world. The sky grows dark and the air grows cool; it doesn't need to, time doesn't pass the same way here, but Ariadne's pretty sure they're doing it for Arthur's benefit. Fireflies come out and dance over the grass. That must be Eames, something for Arthur to remember from before.

Once it's fully dark and their stories are exhausted, they head inside. They go up the stairs and into the bedroom, quiet as a bride and bridegroom on their wedding night, even though they all know each other and everything there is about them. Arthur still looks poleaxed, as if he's waiting for one of them to shoot him in the kneecap or the walls to start collapsing around them.

The bed has grown ridiculously wide, the size they always talked about but never found, with plenty of room for three. On the other side of the ornate frame and the maple oval there is a flat plain rectangle of silvered glass.

None of them need to sleep, but Eames and Ariadne have missed him for too long, the tangle of their limbs and the particular scent of each others' skin together, and though Arthur still looks too scared and strange to do anything further they all end up in the bed anyway. Eames is wrapped around his back and she's nestled against his front, head tucked under his chin. For a moment she can almost believe they're alive again.

Arthur starts speaking. He doesn't say how long it's been since Eames died, how long he'd been on his own and on the run. Just that he started feeling unwell and finally went to a doctor, and that it was cancer. Fast-moving, fast-spreading, too far gone by the time he'd gone to do much of anything. "They told me it was going to hurt," he says, voice scraping its way out, words catching in Ariadne's hair. "It did." So he did what he always did, meticulous and orderly and never leaving a mess: he settled his affairs and went back to the warehouse in Paris. Then he swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills and woke up in the middle of a field, by himself, waiting till Ariadne came to find him. His voice stumbles into silence and Ariadne and Eames hold him all the tighter, as if they can put him back together with just the pressure of their arms around him.

She wonders in the days after how long it took Arthur to join them, how long he spent alone before he went to see that doctor. She can see the hollows inside him and wants to reach in and fill them up. As it is, she abandons her duties for days, not leaving his side. Eames is in and out but he always comes back. He wraps himself around them both, muttering about how titchy they are as if nothing has changed. As if it hasn't been years since they were together, separated by bullets and the walls between worlds. Arthur stays quiet, the shadows stay under his eyes, but some of the stiffness in his spine melts away. Time will change the rest, she hopes, and they have plenty of that.

Finally Ariadne opens the door that usually leads to the backyard and leads Arthur out through the wall at the base of the steps to the palace of Dream. The guardians crane their necks and nod when they see he is accompanied by Ariadne, and Eames comes up behind them to bracket Arthur's other side.

The man in the garden is still too thin and too pale to be truly human, but she's grown used to seeing the microexpressions that pass for exhibitions of emotion, and the sparkle of starlight in his eyes is one of satisfaction.

"Arthur. I bid you welcome, to the Dreaming and to my home."

"What do you want me to do?"

"We can find a role for you. You have many talents." The pale lord pauses. "And I find myself in need of a messenger."

Ariadne is shaking her head already; she can't bear the thought of the transformation, of losing him again so quickly, and she clutches at Arthur's wrist. Eames is slower to react, but he turns to Arthur with sorrow in his eyes.

"Do you realize what this means, love?" he asks, voice rough. Arthur looks between them both, to the figure who is waiting patiently.

"I'd have a purpose."

"You would carry my word throughout this realm, and into others. Your form would change but you would retain your mind." Dream pauses. "Or rather, your mind would come to match your form. You would still be Arthur. But you would be my raven."

Ariadne wants to tell Arthur that he can't, that he's theirs, that he can't decide to do this when they've only just gotten him back. He's still not looking at her. "Would it be permanent?" he asks.

"Lucien was the first raven. Now he is my librarian," Dream says. "Ravens have come and gone, and some remain in the Dreaming while others go on to places elsewhere."

"And would I still get to see them?" Arthur continues. He's leaning forward and tugging a little at Ariadne's hold on his wrist, though she's not sure he even realizes he's doing it. There's a charge in his voice.

Dream smiles softly, infinitely kind, infinitely sad. He's not very good with relationships, Eve said, but he sees the whole span of them in his realm and he's far more understanding than some give him credit for. "When you are not on my business, you may go where you please within my realm."

"Arthur, _no,_ " Ariadne says urgently. "You can't. Not when --"

"I can't do this, Ariadne," Arthur says, turning at last to face both of them. He holds Ariadne's hand in his, reaches out to put his free hand on Eames's shoulder. "You have no idea what it's like, waiting to die alone, waiting for your body to betray you. I can't be this person right now. It hurts too much to see the two of you and remember it all right now. I _can't._ " It's painful for him to spit these words out, his fingers curling around Ariadne's with grinding pressure, the sick loneliness a pit inside his eyes. "I need something to do, I can't be a point man here and I can't have you watch me and wait for me to get better because I won't, not if I'm stuck. I can do what he's asking." Abruptly he stops and closes his eyes and takes a shuddering breath, then lets it out slowly. "And then I'll come back. I promise."

The lord of the Dreaming is silent behind Arthur, the glimmer in his eyes tamped down. Ariadne doesn't trust him to hold Arthur's trust, to keep Arthur safe. But she knows by now that talking Arthur out of anything is futile. And she also knows that the lord of the Dreaming keeps his word.

So she pulls Arthur close and looks past him, to the dread pale lord, and meets his eyes. "Do you promise?" she asks. "That when he's done we can have him back?"

"All of you are mine, Ariadne," he says, the depth of infinite ages beneath his words. "But I give you my word: when Arthur has completed his service as my raven, I will restore him to this form and release him to your keeping."

"I suppose that will have to suffice," Eames says, his voice thick. He pulls Arthur in, resting his forehead against the other man's and laying a heavy hand on the back of his neck. Ariadne looks away; they must have this moment to each other. Then there's a gentle touch on her shoulder, and Arthur is lifting her chin and kissing her so sweetly, like the first time in the dream, like all the times after that, her hands clutching at his shirt and his fingers twining in her hair, and when he pulls away he brushes a tear from her cheek with his thumb. He takes her hand and presses something into it. The die's edges etch themselves into her palm, crossing her life line and love line and heart line together.

"It's not forever," he says softly. "I love you. I still do. I'll be right here."

Then he steps away and turns and walks toward the figure all in white, and Dream lifts his hand and the newest raven flutters and lands on his outstretched arm.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks as ever to @gollumgollum and @alierakieron for sterling beta service, to @saynotozombies for her Eames, and most importantly to Li, whose idea it was in the first place for the dreamers to become Morpheus's servants after their deaths. This would never have happened without her.


End file.
